


Asimov of You Everyday

by soloproject



Series: Star Trek shorts [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soloproject/pseuds/soloproject
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life on the Enterprise, the ship that loves him, OR, in which the Enterprise is a jealous fishwife and loves Scotty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asimov of You Everyday

Kirk couldn’t understand it.

Since day one—Okay, the first day of his captaincy, not the first day the Enterprise rose up into space and got shot up by Romulans and had several decks ripped open by photon beams and exposed to space—she worked beautifully.

Six months and not a single glitch; no transporter malfunctions, no nasty concoctions (unless you count that plomeek soup stuff Spock’s always inhaling) coming out of the replicators, no broken consoles, nothing. And then one day, when the two-week shore leave was nearly done, Chekov was doing his usual checks and one of the screens just zapped him to hell.

“Good lord, Kirk, look at his hands!” Bones exclaimed, turning over Chekov’s hands for Kirk to see. Kirk winced. It was pretty rough; the navigator’s palms looked like hamburger and Chekov himself looked grim, absolutely refusing to give in to crying out or tearing up. Kirk had to hand it to him— the whiz kid was braver than a good chunk of his crew.

“You fix him up and release him for duty as you see fit. I’m going to run the checks myself.” Kirk took off down a main corridor and headed toward the lift that led to the main engine room.

The core looked fine. Kirk is not an engineer but he is a starship captain and can ascertain the conditions of his own ship. The warp drive looked fine as well. In fact, nothing seemed out of place.

Still, Kirk was pretty sure empty bottles of ale and a pair of discarded black tights and regulation boots are not part of any engine he knows of. He’s also pretty sure engines don’t giggle and slap each other and if he closed his eyes and stretched his imagination just the slightest bit, he could almost swear the ship was making strangling noises not unlike the kind he himself made when he was trying to keep himself from pushing Spock or Bones to the edge (again).

Kirk pressed the communicator button on the wall console. “Scotty? This is Kirk. Please respond.”

The giggling noise was tamped by growly laughing shushing noises in a very distinct brogue.

“Scotty?” Kirk called but weaker this time and pulling his finger away from the comm.

“Hey, Scotty!” Kirk jogged across the small engine partition and stepped around it, careful not to jiggle anything just in case there really was something wrong with the ship. “Scotty, where are you—oh my god.” Kirk froze and took in the sight of Scotty and a young security officer both looking red-faced and unrepentant, her legs wrapped around Scotty’s waist and Scotty’s hands up her regulation red shirt.

-

“Don’t be such a fishwife,” Scotty said, rolling his eyes as he sat on a medical bed. Bones stood behind him, his face hovering between worry and amusement and holding a hypo in one hand.

“STDs!” Kirk said, trying to sound stern but coming off at a much higher pitch than he would’ve liked. “Also, drinking on duty, that’s not like you at all,” he added with slight trepidation and immediately regretted it when the entire med staff burst into chuckles. Spock’s eyebrows went up and down a few times but that was like, the equivalent of Vulcan chuckling.

“I could still stick him with the hypo, if it’ll make you feel better,” Bones offered, extracting a chortle from Scotty.

“No, no, you can go,” Kirk said and stormed back to the bridge. His command chair vibrated a little comfortingly, making him wonder if there was some way to program massage settings into it or something.

And then it zapped him.

“What now!?” Kirk shouted, causing the entire bridge to turn and look at him. Sulu was especially smirky, helped along by the fact that he looked extra tan and well-rested. Kirk was so going to give him an extra delta shift later and then kick his ass in judo or something.

“Captain?” Spock asked. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Kirk stood straight and addressed the bridge. “Has anyone been experiencing static or glitches at your stations? Any little shocks or lagging in the systems?”

Hands shot up all over the bridge like the inside of a classroom.

“I have noticed this as well,” Spock cut in. “But I have scanned all the systems and the ship seems to be perfectly in order. I can think of no other solution other than—“

“Maybe she’s in a bad mood,” Sulu said, rubbing an affectionate hand over the dash. “Sometimes they get all jealous.”

Chekov turned to look at him curiously, his hands healed by still wearing a thin but strong glove membrane while a fresh layer of skin grew back. “Hikaru, the Enterprise is a ship, a machine with no feelings.”

Sulu cocked an eyebrow at him. “Sometimes, ships have ghosts,” he said, philosophically.

“Totally illogical,” Spock said. “But not entirely unfounded. Perhaps there is a crewmember onboard that the Enterprise is particularly attuned too.”

Kirk was totally not surprised and flattered when all the heads on the bridge turned to look at him.

-

Nothing happened for the next three months.

At least, not until the senior officers are welcomed on-planet for a diplomatic convention, one that consists of lots of fire and very potent liquids. This species in particular had multiple sets of arms and did very well in the intergalactic lotions and potions industry.

“Welcome to the Federation,” Kirk mumbled into a pile of just-right cushions as several dozen fingers prodded him into the consistency of oatmeal.

Somewhere nearby, Kirk heard Bones groaning in relief, in a tone that was nearly pornographic. Chekov had looked terrified but they had been plying him with honeyed milk and mushy balls that were the sweets of the planet and the women kept hugging him into their breasts and complimenting the Russian until he was bright red in the face. Sulu had gone into some kind of shock and his eyes had glazed over when they opened their historical archive to him and presented him with some kind of weird ancient pistol of theirs. Scotty was enjoying himself too, holding a captive audience with his jokes and drinking games.

“Aye, this stuff is magnificent!” Scotty told Kirk, showing him some kind of liquor in a box-shaped container. It had a large drinking tube poking out of it and Scotty was sucking it up at an alarming rate. “They call this “Franzia!” A myriad of brightly colored and decorated multi-armed creatures of indiscernible gender tittered and stroked him indulgently.

The communicator chirped.

“Captain,” Spock said. The Vulcan had declined to come, something about being aware of the excessive sensual quality of this particular race and go ahead, you lush Terran whores but all Kirk had heard was blah, blah, Vulcans are party-poopers.

Besides, Uhura had elected to stay on board as well, so who knew what shenanigans they might be up to?

“Yes?” Kirk responded when one of the attendants put the communicator near his face. It sounded more like “Ysshhhhnnnngggrrr”—but Spock should know him well enough to make it out by now.

“Hm. Yes, Captain. I am informing you that we have finished scanning the surface of the planet for classification purposes.”

“Ok, cool. Carry on.”

“Captain, I am contacting to tell you that after the scan, the Enterprise began to suffer a malfunction that we cannot as of this time quite ascertain. The ship appears to be venting atmosphere and in a few hours, we will all die of asphyxiation,” Spock said, sounding like he was ordering a pizza. There was a shuffling noise and Uhura’s silky, dangerous voice came on.

“Jim,” She said, in a voice that made Kirk ashamed for all the time he’d given his mother lip. “If you don’t sort this out, I’m going to haunt you forever.”

“Captain,” Spock interrupted. “Transporting all of you will certainly drain energy. I suggest you send Mr. Scott back so he may assess the situation, else our orbit decays and we destroy the planet on impact.”

“Can that really happen?” Kirk was up in an instant, pulling away from (the delicious, relaxing) ministrations of the attendants and yanking his shirt over his head. He gathered his phaser and strapped it on and picked up a large tumbler of cold water.

“Although abundant, the planet is very small. And we are outfitted with an anti-matter drive.” Spock said.

“Okay, okay, I’m getting Scotty. Prepare to beam. Kirk out.” Kirk said, snapping his communicator shut and entering the room Scotty was occupying. Scotty was on his back, naked and covered in some kind of brocade sheet. He was snoring and there were empty tumblers and bottles everywhere. Kirk upended the water on Scotty, causing the man to jerk awake.

“Wha’s the big idea?” Scotty slurred and turned over. Kirk leaned over and grabbed his arm, flicking open his comm..

“Kirk to Spock, beam us up.”

-

“Fascinating,” Spock said, staring at the screen.

Scotty was prone on the floor, snoozing just as he had been, even while he materialized in the transporter room.

“What is?” Kirk made a face at the Scot and wrinkled his nose.  
“As soon as you and Mr. Scott returned, Captain, the ship stabilized. In an instant, in fact.”

“Are you sure you aren’t just messing with me?”

Spock Vulcan-glared at him, nothing more than a slight twitch in the brow. “I never ‘mess’ with anyone.”

Kirk sighed. “I think I know what’s going on.”

-

“…so, Scotty, I’m afraid I can’t allow you to have sex or flirt with anyone while on board. Just until the Enterprise understands that you’re never going to leave her,” Kirk said, his face serious. All around him, the other crewmembers present at the meeting tried not to laugh. “What do you have to say about that?” Kirk asked, crossing his legs.

Scotty looked pensive. “Y’know, I had my suspicions. Probably around the time I took Engineer Kinney down for a look-see in the lower decks. He got a face full of steam and I daresay, wasn’t very nearly as pretty afterwards.” He grinned.

“Too much information,” McCoy grumbled. “I just can’t buy the idea that the Enterprise is aware of your proclivities, Scotty.”

“Vell,” Chekov piped up, his hand raised like a school kid. “The ghost in the machine concept is not as farfetched as it was two centuries ago and it has been at least one since we’ve achieved successful AI. Besides, it’s not a completely sentient ship…yet.”

“Thanks, Chekov, thanks a lot. Now I can’t have a drink in my quarters without worrying about being watched,” McCoy said.

Chekov grinned at him, his eyes glazed with youthful impatience—obviously dying to get to the core of the problem; probably two seconds away from an intellectual meltdown before he stripped naked and tried to integrate himself into the ship’s computer or something.

“Okay!” Scotty rose from his seat abruptly. “I’m going to do something about this once and for all.” He hooked his thumbs into the waist of his pants and looked around expectantly. “Well, who’s coming?”

The rest of the bridge crew looked everywhere but at him.

“Well, alright. Just don’t even accuse me of not inviting you to any of my threesomes,” Scotty walked off, cheerfully whistling a tune from the highlands.

\- END -


End file.
